Situationist International

A complete English translation of a book first published in France in 1999, a post-mortem on May ’68, discussing the various ways that the most popular demands voiced in May were recuperated by capitalism in its post-1968 “revolution from the right” (Pasolini) and incorporated into a consumerist lifestyle of selfish hedonism, pseudo-individualism, phony libertarianism and permitted rebellion (the “triumph of situationism”) as part of the restructuring of the global workforce and the creation of a “new man”, concluding with a call for “a new civilizing phenomenon” and “a revolution of the spirit” similar to the movement led by Christianity during the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

An account of the “Strasbourg Scandal” of 1966—widely recognized as a precursor to the greater scandal of May 1968—its background, its protagonists, the takeover of the local student union and the origins of the pamphlet, “The Poverty of Student Life…”, the role played by the members of the Situationist International in the affair, particularly Debord and Mustapha Khayati, the humiliating exclusion of the “Garnaultins” in January 1967, and the SI’s subsequent descent into an even more rigid and unapproachable sectarian existence until its dissolution in 1972.

Among the most influential members of Situationist International, Vaneigem is inspired by facts and debates on the agenda in order to rip apart the certainties of the right-thinking self-righteous and the claims of those who stand in judgement and censorship. A provocative pamphlet in the wake of the enlightenment and libertarian tradition.

A brief review of the role played by the situationists, the enragés, and the Council for the Maintenance of the Occupations (CMDO—composed of “about forty people”) in the movement of May 1968 in France, which the situationists claimed was an aborted “revolution”, but whose “only major victory”, according to Amorós, was “its survival in memory” for, “contrary to the assertions of the SI, the modernization of capitalism and the general proletarianization of the population … did not produce new, broader, and more intransigent forces of denial”, as the spectacle “subjugated its antagonists by manipulating their desires and satisfying false needs”, and its “mercenary thinkers finished the job”.

The Situationist Times was an international, English-language periodical created and edited by Jacqueline de Jong, of which six issues were published between 1962 and 1967. A radical compendium using such Situationist tactics as détournement and a printed form of dérive, the journal included essays, artwork, found images, and quotations concerned with such issues as topology, politics, and spectacle culture.

Articles by or about the Situationist International, a libertarian Marxist group who wrote extensively on culture and were highly influential on the events of May 1968 in France; members included Guy Debord, Raoul Vaneigem and René Riesel.

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